Chapter 25: Saturday, Nov. 26

In which a fireside chat veers toward aphrodisiacs, and Diantha gets saucy and confessional.

By Alfred Alcorn

Aug 31, 2001 | It's evening and we are back from a couple of days out at the cottage. Elsbeth, weak and frail as she is, asked several times to spend Thanksgiving at the lake. I remonstrated with her, saying what if something happened? What if there was an emergency?

She smiled and took my hand. "Norman, dear, it's already happened. I'm beyond emergencies."

"But ..."

"What's the worst that could happen? That I die out there. I've love to die out there." She laughed her wonderful laugh, even if it were only a slight echo of itself. "you could build a bonfire on the lakeshore and cremate me right there like they did Byron. And have an orgy afterwards."

It turned out to be, despite everything, a wonderful time, of the kind that haunts you afterwards. We all knew, of course, that this would be the last time Elsbeth would make the journey, taking the same roads, the same turns, winding our way through the needle-carpeted evergreen forest until we come to the fork in the road that I always used to miss. I think we fear death because we think we will miss all the things we do again and again in life.

It hasn't changed much over the years. We've cleared back the hemlock saplings encroaching on the drive that leads to the cottage. We've had the rotting sills replaced, a new well dug, and some new wiring installed. But otherwise, it's not a lot different than it used to be all those years ago. We packed an extra space heater, because Elsbeth does suffer from the cold.

Upon arrival, I plugged in an electric blanket for Elsbeth on the wicker sofa in front of the fireplace. I lit the fire while Diantha started the turkey breast in the oven. She said it looked like something that had been given thalidomide, what with the stumps where the legs had been. But we had all the fixings -- stuffing, cranberry sauce, creamed onions, gravy and mashed potatoes, three kinds of squash, a decent white wine, and pumpkin pie. We toasted our lives and we said a prayer of thanks and asked that Korky be returned safe and sound to us.

While there was still light, Diantha and I took a walk along the lake shore to the pines on the point that reaches like a widow's peak into the mirroring water. Why, I wondered, is there consolation in the beauty of dying nature? All around, the light of the setting sun touched to gold the browns and yellows of the trees, shrub, and withered grass. I could hear the blue jays of my youth and the chiding of chickadees. I wanted to weep out of sheer poignancy.

Perhaps sensing my mood, Diantha looped her arm in mine, as though to remind me that life goes on. Her gesture both deepened and sweetened my melancholia, because it was exactly the way, over the past couple of years, Elsbeth and I had walked these paths -- in a communing bliss so complete we were as one with each other and with everything we could see and hear.

Later, as it darkened and the wind came up, we made Elsbeth comfortable on a bed we had moved into a small room downstairs. Then we sat together on the same wicker sofa Elsbeth and I had courted on when we were young. The sensation for me was not so much of déjà vu as of temporal collapse, as though time had contracted and vanished, as though back then and right now were one and the same.

"Do you miss Sixy?" I asked as Diantha sipped an iced Pernod and I toyed with a dry sherry.

She laughed and shook her head, pleased, I think, that I was that interested in her personal life. "Naw. I was outgrowing him, anyway. I can't believe I ever took that stuff he calls music seriously, never mind listened to it."

I nodded. "And there are lots of other young men in the world."

"I'm not sure I want another young man."

"Really?"

"Really. It's like breaking in a new puppy." She turned to me, pulling closer, her face animated in the firelight. "They're very cute and they wag their tails at you and bark and yip and lick your face and other places ..." She giggled at her boldness. "But they leave messes all over the place. I think I'm one of those girls that likes sophisticated older men."

"Lots of those around, too," I said, sighing. "Lots of other loose people around these days. I often wonder what they do for Thanksgiving."

She pulled closer, her hip touching mine. She took my hand. "Let's promise, right now, Norman, no matter what happens, that we'll always have Thanksgiving together."

"Done," I said, deeply touched.

"You know. I keep thinking about that video clip. You know, of the three people."

"Yes, it's strangely moving."

She gave a giggle. "You mean it makes you horny."

"Well ... yes."

She tittered. "I love your reticence, Norman. It's so sexy."

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